Terminator Salvation: Cold War (23 page)

“Are you all right, Alexei?”

Ivanov fingered the wound.

“Nothing worth mentioning.” He wiped his fingers on the front of his coveralls, leaving a crimson smear behind. “The ship?”

Emergency power kicked in, bringing maybe eighty percent of the control room’s lights back on. Losenko surveyed the room, spotting extensive damage to both the crew and the equipment. Warning indicators flashed on nearly every console, while bruises, cuts, and minor burns scarred the faces of the frightened sailors. Steam jetted from a ruptured pipe, hissing like an enraged eel, until an alert crewman reached up to close a valve manually. Sparks erupted from shorted circuits, until doused by the fire extinguishers.

A smoky haze contaminated the atmosphere, which smelled of cold sweat and burnt wiring. The men coughed at their stations. Damage reports started pouring in from all over K-115.

“Wounded, but still alive,” Losenko said, assessing their situation. He offered a silent prayer of thanks to the long-dead engineers and shipwrights who had overseen the
Gorshkov
’s construction. Ordinarily, he would return to the surface to effect immediate repairs and stem any leaks in the ship’s hull, but not with the
Smetlivy
still lurking above them. Escape was still the order of the day.

But how deep do we dare descend with our hull scarred and our systems compromised?

And was Frantz done with them yet?

A thunderous detonation answered that question. The periscope platform lurched to port, throwing Losenko hard against the safety railing, bruising his ribs. Blue-hot sparks flared from the control consoles, forcing men to leap backward or risk electrocution. Sundered metal shrieked in protest somewhere above the control room. The periscopes rattled in their housings. Helmsmen, securely buckled into their seats, wrestled with their wheels, fighting and failing to keep the
Gorshkov
on an even keel. Something crashed loudly in the sonar shack. A voice cried out in pain. Losenko stumbled across the platform.

Ivanov reached out to steady the captain.

“Another torpedo?”

“No,” Losenko guessed. The explosion had not felt like a direct strike. “Depth charge.” As he recalled, the
Smetlivy
was equipped with rocket launchers capable of firing RGB-60 unguided depth charges. The rockets could be fired in multiple rounds, the better to increase the odds of destroying an enemy submarine. Despite the attacking aircraft, Frantz was sparing no effort to sink the
Gorshkov.
Apparently, Skynet would rather see the ballistic submarine destroyed than beyond its control.

A second charge, even closer than the first, pummeled the sub. Warning klaxons blared, but Losenko was proud to see that not a single seaman abandoned his post. The
Gorshkov
was taking a beating, but the shock waves were nothing compared to the damage they would sustain should one of the charges score a direct hit. Losenko doubted K-115 could survive another blow, yet it was only a matter of time before one of them came too close. Their only hope was to get away from the warship before that happened.

“Captain!” Pavlinko hailed him. “A VLF transmission via the buoy. The Americans are requesting our assistance again.”

Losenko’s eyes lit up. Perhaps there was another way.

“Are you certain?”

“No!” Ivanov protested, reading his mind. “Captain, you cannot be considering this!”

A depth charge went off several hundred meters above them. Was it just his imagination or were the salvos decreasing in accuracy? Perhaps the
Smetlivy
was otherwise occupied?

“Those aircraft are fighting our battle for us, Alexei.”

“Good!” Ivanov blurted. “Let them destroy each other! They deserve nothing less!”

His XO had a point. This might be their best opportunity to escape the conflict, leaving the destroyer and the Yankee pilots to fight it out while they slipped away in the confusion.
But to where,
Losenko asked himself,
and to what end?
Just to aimlessly wander the seas once more? Without allies or purpose?

John Connor’s stirring exhortations surfaced from his memory. “
We can win this war,”
Connor had promised, “
but only if we come together against our common enemy.”
Losenko had listened to those words many times in the privacy of his stateroom.

“
If you can hear this, you are the Resistance.”

Losenko made up his mind.

“Full stop!” he ordered. “Ready tubes two and four! Prepare firing solutions!”

Ivanov could not contain himself.

“Captain, what are you doing?”

“The American planes came to our defense, Alexei. We can do no less.” Losenko turned to the weapons officer. “Give me a snapshot... with all due speed!”

Aiming the torpedoes could be a devilishly tricky business, with multiple objects moving in three dimensions. Ideally, there would be time to check and recheck all the calculations before firing; in the heat of battle, however, the best they could do was take a quick “snapshot” of the situation and hope for the best.

Fortunately, the
Smetlivy
presented a damned big target.

The crew hustled to carry out his orders, realizing that their own lives were on the line. This was the first time that any of the men aboard had found themselves in an actual, life-or-death battle with an enemy vessel, as opposed to war games and drills. Who would have guessed that, when they finally were called to take up arms in a genuine engagement, it would be against one of their own ships?

The irony was almost too much for Losenko to bear.

“Torpedos armed and ready, sir!” Pavlinko reported. He sat at the weapons control console on the starboard side of the control room. A computerized battle management system, Omnibus-BDRM, processed the relevant data and commanded the torpedoes. In a sense, it was Skynet’s ancestor.

“Do we have a firing solution?” Losenko demanded.

“Yes, sir! A good snapshot.” Pavlinko’s fingers stabbed the weapons console. “Feeding the data to the torpedoes now.”

Dasvidania,
Mr. Frantz,
Losenko thought. “Fire at will. Both tubes,” he said aloud.

Two loud whooshing sounds, one after another, came from the torpedo room at the bow. Two 533-millimeter torpedoes shot upward at the surface. Losenko prayed that the
Smetlivy
was too busy with the American aircraft to defend itself from the speeding bullets. For a second, he almost felt sorry for the destroyer. It was under attack from both above and below.

“Evasive maneuvers!” the captain ordered. He did not want the four-ton vessel coming down on top of them. “Helm, right fifteen degrees rudder. Full speed!”

As programmed, the torpedoes went off beneath the warship’s keel. The dual explosions, going off above the submariners’ heads, were far too close for comfort. Michenko kept his eyes glued on the glowing green sonar display. His gleeful smile was Losenko’s first indication that their torpedoes had prevailed.

“She’s breaking up, sir! We broke her back!”

Cheers erupted throughout the control room. Even Ivanov permitted himself a thin smile. There had been a time when the sinking of a Russian destroyer would have been cause for dismay, but not today. Losenko let the men savor their victory as he watched the bisected corpse of the
Smetlivy
drop out of sight on the sonar screen. He could not resist tweaking Ivanov a little.

“Now then, Alexei. I believe you had something to say.”

The
starpom
shrugged. The cut upon his brow had already stopped bleeding.

“I stand corrected, Captain.” He glanced around the ravaged control room, which had seen better days. “We need to assess the damage, sir, but I suggest that we put some distance between ourselves and the Americans first.”

“I disagree, Mr. Ivanov.” Losenko’s racing heart began to slow. “We need to surface immediately for repairs.” Multiple damage reports, from all over the ship, were already competing for his attention; he counted on his crew to respond to the most urgent leaks immediately. “Besides, I wish to make the acquaintance of our new allies.” Ignoring Ivanov’s scandalized expression, he addressed Communications. “Radio the Americans. Tell them to expect us.”

Was there truly a Resistance? Losenko could not wait to find out.

A spreading oil slick was all that remained of the
Smetlivy.
Frantz and his crew of turncoats had gone to a watery grave, along with whatever foul machine had been holding their leash. Losenko did not mourn them. The cowards had made their choice—and suffered the consequences. Better that the destroyer plunge to the bottom of the sea, than that K-115 suffer such a fate. Losenko knew he and his crew were lucky to be alive.

If one of those depth charges had hit before we got our torpedoes off
...

Frantz had claimed one victory before his demise, however. The smoking remains of an Apache attack helicopter floated atop the ocean, a victim of the destroyer’s guns. A second chopper hovered in the sky above the wreckage, keeping watch over the downed aircraft’s pilot, who had apparently bailed out just in time. Floating bodies suggested that not all of the Apache’s crew had been so lucky.

The
Gorshkov
rolled atop the choppy surface of the Bering Sea, its scarred deck a steel beach rising above the waves. Preliminary reports had found significant damage to the outer hull near the stern, but all major flooding had been contained. Alas, four enlisted men had been killed by an exploding bulkhead in the turbine room, and six more men had been severely burned by a fire in the galley. Thankfully, however, the nuclear reactor remained on-line and there was no trace of radiation leakage. As badly as they had been hurt, the outcome of the battle could have been much worse.

Too bad we cannot return to Murmansk for repairs!

Losenko watched from the hatch atop the sail as his men, grateful for a chance to breath a little fresh air, labored to fish the American pilot from the sea. He was somewhat surprised to see that the pilot appeared to be a woman. Her bright orange life-vest helped her stand out against the deep blue waves as she swam toward the waiting submarine. The Russian sailors wore life jackets as well, just in case they fell overboard during the hazardous operation. Chief Komarov supervised the rescue team as they tossed a rope out. Thankfully, the sea was calm enough to permit such a rescue.

“I’m not sure this is wise, Captain,” Ivanov said in a low voice. Standing beside Losenko on the bridge, the XO kept a close eye on the chopper hovering nearby. An adhesive bandage was stuck to his forehead. “We are very vulnerable here.”

“A calculated risk,” the captain conceded. “But if that ‘copter wished to attack us, it would have done so already.”

He turned his binoculars from the rescue operation to the aircraft in question. Even in the dimming light, he was struck by the piecemeal appearance of the Apache, which appeared to have been cobbled together from parts of several different aircraft. Its weathered paint job was a patchwork quilt of varied camouflage patterns. An olive-green door clashed with the sandy brown hue of the surrounding panels. Crude graffiti, slapped all over its fins and fuselage, hardly reflected the professionalism of the old U.S. military. A skull-and-crossbones emblem, with neon-red eyes, screamed pirate more than soldier. “Skynet SUCKS!” was spray-painted in English upon the landing skids.

The junkyard look of the chopper, along with its vulgar bravado, spoke volumes about the Resistance.

“We cannot cruise forever without allies, Alexei.” Losenko lowered his binoculars. “You saw how the men reacted when they thought we had met up with our comrades-in-arms. For the first time in months, they had hope.” He nodded at the Resistance chopper. “Think of this as a leap of faith.”

Ivanov threw his own words back at him.

“I thought you told the traitor, Frantz, that trust was in short supply these days?”

“The pilots in those aircraft did not lie to us,” Losenko reminded him. “And they came to our defense when we were in peril. If not for the providential arrival of the American aircraft, K-115 might be resting on the ocean floor now, its hull fatally breached. That alone warrants further investigation.”

The XO grunted dubiously.

“If you say so, Captain.” He glared at the Apache, no doubt thinking of the American missiles that had incinerated his family. “But remember what they say about wolves in sheep’s clothing. I, for one, intend to stay on my guard.”

“I expect nothing less, Mr. Ivanov.”

Down on the deck, Chief Kamarov and his men succeeded in hauling the Yankee pilot out of the sea. Losenko descended to meet her, followed closely by Ivanov. The suspicious
starpom
kept one hand on the grip of his sidearm. A cold spray pelted their faces. White water lapped against the exposed sides of the hull. After months of cruising smoothly beneath the surface, the shifting deck felt uncomfortably wobbly beneath Losenko’s feet. His sea legs were rusty.

“No rash moves,” he warned Ivanov. “This woman is our guest until I say otherwise.”

A heavy wool blanket had been thrown over the shivering pilot’s soaked flight suit. She stood unsteadily upon the rocking deck. Watchful seamen flanked her, holding onto her arms to keep her both upright and under control. Water dripped from buzz-cut brown hair. A black eye and swollen lip testified to a rough landing. Silver dog tags hung on a chain around her neck. Losenko put her age in the mid-twenties. She appeared to be of Latino descent. Her lips were blue.

“
P-pryvet!”
the Yankee greeted them in atrocious Russian. “You the skipper of this boat?” Her teeth chattered. “H-hope your English is better than my R-Russian.”

“I speak English,” Losenko replied. “Captain Dmitri Losenko, at your service. We are grateful for your assistance against our foe.”

“Hell, thanks for p-plucking me from the drink. I was starting to feel like an ice cube in a cold soda. Talk about a brain freeze!” She pulled away from her guardians and enthusiastically took the captain’s hand in an icy grip. “Corporal Luz Ortega. Pleased to meet you.”